


One More Night

by WithExtraScribbles



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kharlan War Era, Some light angst, somewhat of a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25581808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithExtraScribbles/pseuds/WithExtraScribbles
Summary: 'Why was it that on the calmest of nights, in which the day's sole stress had been attempting to win one over on Kratos, Yuan Ka-Fai could not sleep?'Kharlan War Oneshot in which Yuan can't help but feel like that night might be their last.
Relationships: Kratos Aurion & Yuan Ka-Fai
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	One More Night

**Author's Note:**

> I've been looking through old things to migrate to AO3 and I stumbled across this old oneshot I wrote in an attempt to break out of writer's block in 2014.

The sound of another’s soft breathing lulled around Yuan, blue hair fanning over the softness of his pillow. Usually, it would be like a lullaby, a gentle reminder that almost close enough for his fingertips to brush there was a warm back, a strong and steady heartbeat. The door was locked, an array of weaponry within his reach, enough mana to summon if necessary. It should have been all he needed to fall into a comfortable sleep.

But not tonight.

It wasn’t that there was anything special about this night. They hadn’t done anything they wouldn’t ordinarily have done. He hadn’t ticked anyone off or screwed someone over who could cause him any immediate problems. He hadn’t even said anything that hindsight told him was stupid and should be apologised over after a night of agonisingly beating down his pride.

So then, why? Why was it that on the calmest of nights, in which the day’s sole stress had been attempting to win one over on Kratos, Yuan Ka-Fai could not sleep?

With a huff, he flopped to the other side, the ethereal light of the night through blue curtains drawing his eyes to his companion’s peaceful face. Through the gloom, it seemed unnaturally pale, unnecessarily still. And there it was: the thing that prevented him slipping into sleep – something inside his stomach and chest that coiled restlessly around him and left him with this uneasy feeling that something was wrong.

He shut his eyes tightly. He was being ridiculous. He couldn’t even accept one entirely good day as true. No, he had to question it until his mind ruined the day by labelling it the eye of a storm. With another sigh that sounded more like a low growl, he flipped onto his back and glared at the ceiling.

On the other bed, Kratos stirred, and Yuan held his breath. Nothing like this ever woke the human up. Whenever they slept in an inn deemed relatively safe, Kratos slept so deeply that but for the kicking away of blankets he always did, he might be in a coma. Still, it didn’t hurt to be cautious. And after the Ozette Flu incident, Yuan could never be too cautious about the sleeping human. The wakeful human hid too much.

“What is it?”

The sleepy slur snapped Yuan’s head to the side to find an open pair of eyes reflecting the blue light. “Huh?”

“What is it?” the human repeated groggily.“Something’s bothering you.”

Yuan looked at the human in a combination of shock and confusion. As rare as it was, it wasn’t unheard of for Kratos to wake in the night, but it was definitely unheard of for him to establish there was no danger and then choose to wake himself up further by starting a conversation. Very little woke the human; almost nothing kept him awake.

There was a thud as Kratos’ elbow collided with the headboard.

“It’s the middle of the night, Kratos,” Yuan finally managed.

Kratos was still looking at him. It took him a moment to answer. His tone when he did echoed Yuan’s confusion. “Yes?”

“Are you even awake?”

“Yes,” the human replied, much more quickly this time. “Just about.” There was a pause in which Yuan digested this. It was broken once again by Kratos. “You, on the other hand, seem to have been wide awake for a while. Gald for those thoughts?”

Yuan shrugged as best he was able to and then remembered that the human wasn’t able to see in the dark as well as he was and answered with the only thing he could think of, “Go back to sleep, stupid. We’ve got to be up early tomorrow.”

Kratos yawned and propped himself up against the headboard. “I will when you tell me what it is that is wrong.” His speech was regaining normality and it was clear that if Yuan didn’t figure out something to appease him with, the stubborn human was just going to sit there all night and wait for it.

Some days he swore he hated humanity more than others.

“Nothing,” he said after a pause. It was all there was to say, because there wasn’t anything wrong. That was the problem. He felt as though there was when there wasn’t. The closest to this feeling, if he had to put a quantifier on it, would be a watered down variant of the times in which he had realised that Kratos’ days were numbered significantly less than his were – the sudden realisation that for him, the end of their time together was almost close enough to touch.

The sentiment crawled beneath his skin. Suppressing a shudder, his eyes sought out the human. Kratos was still looking at him expectantly. Yuan looked away.

He wasn’t going to say it; he knew it was stupid, ridiculous really, but that feeling only intensified when he thought of how fleeting human lives were and he couldn’t help but think it – what if the two were connected? What if it was Kratos causing this, if there was something the matter with the human that he’d only half noticed?

“You’re alright, right?” The words were out before he could retract them. All he could do was justify them. “You don’t normally wake up in the night.”

“I am fine,” Kratos replied and as if aware that this wasn’t enough for Yuan, added, “I believed my legs were entangled in the blanket and I have now rectified the situation. I won’t apologise for waking you – it is clear that you were awake already.”

“Mm,” Yuan agreed and looked over the human once again. Sure enough, the blankets he had been in the process of kicking away when last Yuan had looked at the sleeping human were now smoothed across his lower body.

Still, that niggling worry did not go away and Yuan couldn’t help it – the image of Kratos’ countdown reaching zero was trapped behind his eyes. The tightness in his chest felt as though it was warning him that there was only one more night and it was this one.

“And you’re completely sure that you’re fine? Not at all feeling a little peaky?”

Kratos raised one eyebrow. “Certain. Is this what was on your mind?”

Yuan sighed, sinking further into his pillow. “Not until you woke up,” he responded.

Kratos was still looking at him, obviously waiting for him to continue. It was annoying, how persistent he always was, how much patience he always had, how when he knew there was something that needed to be aired, he would just silently be there until Yuan couldn’t stand it and had to blurt the thing out even if it was, like it was now, utterly ridiculous and pointless and laughable.

Still, it was better than being stared at like that.

“I supposed that today was just so uneventful that I can’t help looking for the catch to it.”

Kratos nodded understandingly, clearly assuming (correctly) that Yuan would see it. He never laughed. That was the thing about Kratos in times like these. However silly the thing that bothered Yuan was, Kratos never laughed at it. Yuan would have scoffed, snorted at the very least, but not Kratos. Sometimes he would smile and if the problem included Martel, he would usually chuckle and submit himself to a sharp jab to the side. But he never truly mocked him.

And today, it only made Yuan feel somewhat miserable. Kratos always acted as though he was gifted with a lifespan longer than an elf and had all that time at his disposal to give to people like Yuan. The long pause before he answered and his words when he did only punctuated that statement.

“We can only take it as it comes. This refers to the good as well as the bad that we encounter as we go. We must be ready for events take a turn for the worse but perhaps not expect it.”

He sat up straight, pulling his arms forward to stretch them. He didn’t react at the cracking of his left shoulder – it was a daily occurrence now – but Yuan winced nonetheless. It was just a reminder of how much quicker Kratos aged.

“If you are so concerned,” the human continued, turning to him, “then I will take watch for the remainder of the night as I have slept for the first half of it. It is not wise for you to travel sleeplessly.”

Yuan shook his head and scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous, Kratos,” but his tone was oddly warm. “I’m good. Now go back to sleep.”

Kratos held his gaze through the gloom for a moment longer and Yuan wondered if the human was about to argue with him. But instead, he stretched again and said, “Do you want to push the beds together?”

Yuan quirked his eyebrows, unable to beat back the smile from his lips. “No really, I’m fine.”

Kratos got up, felt his way around his bed and pushed it against Yuan’s anyway. That done, he flopped back onto it, drew untucked covers around him and inched his back towards the join of their beds. He said nothing more than a sleepy wish goodnight to the sighing half-elf, knowing without seeing that behind the huff was a smile.

For a few minutes, Yuan did not move from where he laid on his back, just tilted his head to the side to watch the steady rise and fall of a human chest as Kratos eased back into sleep. In just those moments, the worries that had kept him awake seemed far away and his loudest thought was an affectionate, ‘what a stupid human.’

Once, having that back turned so defencelessly on him would have prompted thoughts of how easy it would be to dispose of the military officer who had caused his forces so much torment in the past, how stupid the human was to keep presenting him such chances, how one day, he would be done with this group of people and would take that opportunity with pleasure.

Now, he simply rolled over, pushing himself backwards into the bed, and allowed his own back to draw level with his companion’s, not touching but close enough that all he had to do to feel the human’s heartbeat would be to lean back. That was the point of the beds being together; Kratos had his back and he had Kratos’.

Kratos really was a stupid human, to go this far to ease his paranoia. And he really was a stupid half-elf, for letting it, if just for a moment, work. Slowly, Yuan’s eyelids fluttered closed, Kratos’ closeness bringing with it a warm presence that was oddly comforting, his steady breathing a lullaby that wrapped around him the idea of sleep as it usually did.

And there it was, the lines of the blueprint suddenly forming a picture. He understood what it was he had been feeling, what it was he had felt this evening represented.

The end.

Things were changing. The end was near, and not, as he had feared, the end of Kratos (he didn’t want to think how near that was). It was the end of this, these nights in which they shared a room, created one large bed from their two small ones, pretended they hadn’t been touching when they woke up in the morning. Because when this journey ended, when they succeeded, it wouldn’t be Kratos lying next to him in the morning. And that wasn’t something bad at all.

No, it was far from it. It wasn’t fear that should rule him now, it was anticipation, determination, careful calculation. Because now he felt it, like they did, like Kratos always had. Now he saw it, the end. Not just any end, the good ending.

He saw the pacts they had gotten, the enemies they had defeated, the strength they had accumulated and _that_ –the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they could really end this war. They could really settle down and have that peaceful life he’d always thought impossible. It left him no choice but to recognise it – that he might, for once, have been wrong, that for once, just this once, there might even be a favourable conclusion for him.

For them.

Because even if that horrible feeling from earlier had been right and he really had just one more night to lie with Kratos like this, it wasn’t over. They had each other’s backs whether sleep entered the equation or not.

All four of them did.

-

Within six months, Martel was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! :)
> 
> When I wrote this, I seriously considered taking out the last line and ending with a more hopeful Yuan instead the cynic he becomes. But I didn't at the time, so I've left it in now. If nothing else, it gives an idea of the time frame.


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